Broxmeyer rummaged around on his desk for a pad of paper and a pen. “Your wife’s name?”
“Kerry. K-e-r-r-y. Kerry Wade. She kept her maiden name.”
“Description?”
I gave it to him, in detail. Age: 55, but after her facelift, she could easily pass for ten years younger. Height: 5'4". Weight: 120. Body type: slender, willowy. Hair color: auburn. Hairstyle: medium short, with a kind of underflip on the sides. No visible distinguishing marks.
“What was she wearing?”
“White shorts, light blue blouse, white Reeboks with blue trim. And probably a wide-brimmed straw hat. She wouldn’t go out in the bright sun without it.”
“Okay,” Broxmeyer said when he’d finished writing, “I’ll have Marge put it on the air right away.”
“Thank you.”
“One more thing. Contact phone numbers-the house, your cellular. Your wife’s, too, for the record.”
I recited the cell numbers from memory. “I don’t know the house number. Not even sure the phone’s connected.”
“Cellulars’ll do. I’ll call you, or somebody will, if there’s anything to report. Your wife comes home on her own, let us hear from you right away.”
I said okay.
He worked on his tired eyes some more. “Look,” he said, “this kind of thing happens a fair amount up here in the summer. People wander off into the woods, get themselves lost. Usually, they find their own way out.”
“Unless they have an accident-a bad fall so they can’t walk.”
“Well, that’s possible. But she couldn’t have gone too far on foot. She’s still missing come morning, I’ll get one of the other deputies to start combing the area. Or do it myself if I can free up the time. She’ll turn up.”
“Or I’ll find her.”
“Right.” Then, as I took a step toward the door, “One thing you should know. Green Valley is a quiet place. Low crime rate. Very few assaults against women, and none against a nonlocal as far back as I can remember.”
“I wasn’t thinking along those lines,” I said.
But I had been. After what had happened to me, the three months of hell at Deer Run, how could I not think along those lines?
The house was just as I’d left it: locked door, dark windows, empty silence.
Hurt to see it like that, but it didn’t make me feel any less hopeful. Kerry had told me that she’d never given up hope the entire three months I was missing and presumed dead; never once lost faith. She’d lived on it, and so would I.
But I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. Still a little daylight left. I unlocked the door, reached in just far enough to turn on the porch light, then locked it again, and put myself back into the car.
I don’t know how long I drove the hillside and valley roads in the general vicinity, stopping at three lighted homes that had been unoccupied before, showing the portrait photo of Kerry I kept in my wallet, and watching heads shake and listening to voices saying the same words over and over: “No, sorry, haven’t seen a woman looks like that. No, sorry. No, sorry.” At least an hour, maybe two, until long past dark. A fat harvest moon made it easier to see what lay along the shadow-edged blacktops, but there was nothing to see. Every few minutes, I hit the redial button on my cell phone. Nothing to hear, either, except the empty ringing.
The only reason I gave it up was vision-blurring fatigue. I lost my bearings and spent five minutes roaming around in a maze of darkness and distant flickering house lights before I came upon a street sign with a name I recognized. Then I misjudged a turn and nearly slid off into a ditch. Danger to myself and to others. And this kind of aimless search wasn’t going to find Kerry, no matter how long I kept it up. There were just too many places she could be, hidden by the night.
Back to the house. I still couldn’t make myself go inside, wrap those unfamiliar walls around myself, so I sat out on the deck. The darkness was alive with the pulse of crickets, a soothing sound on previous nights, but one that had the opposite effect now. It had gotten cold, the kind of after-dark chill that descends on mountain country even in summer, but I noticed it only when the wind kicked up, and only then in a peripheral way. Same with a dull, throbbing headache.
The section of woods I could see on the north side was a clotted wall of black rising up against the moonlit sky. What if that was where Kerry was? I should have gone in there earlier. Checked the timber on the south side, too, and down along the far side of Ridge Hill Road. She couldn’t have walked far from the house, Broxmeyer had said that himself. But there were so damn many copses and stands and wide stretches of timber within a radius of a couple of miles; she could be anywhere.
If she wasn’t back by first light, I’d start combing the woods nearby and work my way outward and downward. As much ground as I could cover, by myself and with Broxmeyer or whoever he sent out to help search. If I couldn’t find her by noon, I’d appeal to Broxmeyer again for an organized hunt; and if that didn’t work, try to talk Sam Budlong into helping me prod the local politicians into it. Tourism was Green Valley’s major industry and the powers that be couldn’t afford the bad publicity that would come from letting too much time pass; a suddenly missing fifty-five-year-old ad agency executive and wife of a longtime San Francisco private investigator was sure media fodder.
Even so, it was bound to take time. Broxmeyer and his fellow deputies had other worries-last night’s explosion, and people pouring into the valley for the holiday weekend among them. No matter how much pushing I did, it wasn’t likely Kerry would become a priority until Wednesday morning at the earliest. And the longer she remained unaccounted for, the slimmer the odds she’d be found in good health.
Getting ahead of myself. Still a chance a law officer responding to the BOLO alert would find her tonight, or she’d make it back here on her own. Or that I’d find her in the morning. The rest of tomorrow and the day after were a long way off. One hour, one minute at a time.
The night chill sharpened, built a tingling in my hands and face, and started me shivering. That, and exhaustion drove me out of the chair, into the house. Get as much rest as possible, or I wouldn’t be worth a damn in the morning.
I took one unshakable certainty to bed with me, let it carry me into a fitful sleep.
Kerry was alive.
I’d know it if she wasn’t. The bond we shared was so deeply forged that if it had been broken, the knowledge, the loss, would be like a piece of steel thrust into my brain. I’d know it, all right.
Wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, she was alive.
8
KERRY
Lucky to be alive.
That had been her first thought when she regained consciousness on the floor of the pickup, her hands and ankles bound with duct tape. And when the crazy man, Pete Balfour, had carried her in here and dumped her on the floor and then left without hurting her anymore, she’d had it again. Lucky to be alive.
But for how long?
Terror swelled again in her mind. She beat it down with an effort of will. She’d never been more afraid in her life, but she’d learned long ago-and Bill had reinforced the knowledge through his experiences-that the only way to deal with fear was to take control of it, hold it at bay. Focus on other things, on Bill, who must be frantic by now, on rescue and safety. Dwell on the fear and it would overpower you, take away your ability to think and reason-and you’d be lost.
Oh, but how long could you hold out? Bill had done it for three months chained to that cabin wall, and still managed to emerge sane. Unimaginable. She’d thought she understood what the ordeal had been like for him, how strong his will to survive had been, but she hadn’t until now. Nobody could unless they found themselves in a similar situation, facing the same kind of horrors. Monstrous coincidence that each of them, husband and wife, could be taken and held captive separately in the same lifetime, no matter what the reasons. Random insanity, for God’s sake. Yet it had happened. It was happening.